Updates from the hills of Tuscany, a restored farmhouse in Chianti, midway between Florence and Siena. We write about local history and culture, life in Tuscany, the seasonal changes, pleasures of the garden and country kitchen, local stories and encounters with wildlife.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Pipistrellus pipistrellus

The Nocturnal Paratroopers

There are bats at Le Ripe and there certainly always have been. When we first arrived to survey the semi-ruins of our future home we discovered bats in the cellar, bats in the bedroom and bats in the barn. Yet they are elusive creatures and for five years now, since the renovations, we have not seen many.

However over
the last couple of days I have been lucky enough to sight bats again at Le
Ripe. The other evening, at dusk but well before dark, I happened to
notice a small, dark round shape zipping out of our bat box (more on
this below); I focused my gaze on the bat box and was treated to the
sight of a second small round shape zipping out after the first. The
image this called to mind when I tried to describe it was of two action
film paratrooper commandos bombing out of a helicopter, diving down towards their mission, their parachutes (in this case the bats' wings) still furled behind them.*

The following morning, a second treat. It was about 7.40, the sky was already light, the sun on the horizon. I was standing on a terrace above the house thinking sleepily about my next task when I noticed a bat flapping around the house guttering. Surprised the bat should be out so 'late' and delighted that I might have a chance to watch it return to its home in the bat box, I fixed my gaze on it as it flapped over the roof.

Suddenly it dived into
the guttering and next thing there was a comical shuffling and
scratching as it made its way along the length of the semicircular
copper tube (some 10-12 metres), presumably pulling itself on its winged
elbows and little hind feet (how else could it have moved?!). The
shuffling continued to the end of the guttering and then turned around
and moved back. I have heard many a lizard scuttling in the guttering
and even perhaps heard the slither of snakes, but I had never imagined
bats crawling there!

guttering or bat food trough

The bat emerged again to fly about but now I could see that the guttering was evidently a very attractive and profitable food trough. The little bat, perhaps dazzled by the increasing daylight, continued to aim at the guttering, bumping into the edge repeatedly until finally managing to slip inside again, where it resumed its comical-sounding, shuffling progress.

Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Common Pipistrelle

How did we come to have bats living so close to the house again after such a long absence?

Several years ago we heard that the Coop, the local monopolistic supermarket chain, was participating in an admirable initiative to repopulate the Tuscan towns and countryside with bats whose numbers had depleted drastically over the decades. A side-benefit of encouraging bats to colonize near human habitation,much emphasized by the organizers,was the subsequent decimation of the mosquito population. The statistic cited was impressive: each bat will consume 2000 mosquitoes in one night! A tempting idea. On looking into the matter a little more carefully we discover that this figure is arrived at by recording the bats' weight before and after eating, then dividing it by the weight of a mosquito. Yet bats do not consume only mosquitoes. All the same we are fairly confident that since bats arrived in our bat box this year there have been considerably fewer mosquitoes about.

Apparently the only bats which will colonize the bat boxes are the following:

Kuhl's Pipistrelle, Pipistrellus kuhlii orpipistrello albolimbato;

Savi's Pipistrelle, Hypsugo savii orpipistrello di Savi;

CommonPipistrelle,Pipistrellus pipistrellus or pipistrello nano;

and

Grey Long-Eared Bat, Plecotus austriacusor orecchione grigio.

We can rule out the Grey Long-Eared as it is apparently rather large and our bats are tiny: our bats' bodies alone look about the size of a walnut. The other three are all what is known as vernal bats, which
hunt in the evening (the Grey Long-Eared also hunts by day).
Having studied the data and characteristics of these three I feel qualified
to make a cautious guess that our little bats are of the Pipistrellus pipistrellus variety, mainly because of their tiny size.

There are some amusing anecdotes associated with the advent of the bat box. For our part, we like to say that the bats tooka while to arrive in our box because they had to learn English first. The boxes distributed by the Coop are inscribed rather conspicuously with the words BAT BOX.

Apparently when the bat boxes first arrived on the scene, customers of the Coop asked whether the boxes came complete with bats.Others wondered whether the boxes had to be hung up in the bedroom (to catch the mosquitoes lurking there). Misinformation and simple-mindedness aside, the boxes appear to have been a success.

Now we shall help supply researchers with information about our bats, for the good of all. The Specola di Firenze,
the zoological section (an extraordinary if at times gruesome
collection open to the public) of Florence's Natural History Museum, is
the institution promoting this experiment throughout Tuscany.

La Specola, Via Romana 17 Florence

*Subsequently we witnessed at least twenty-two (22!)bats exiting the bat box. Someone quipped that we were witnessing the Bätterdämmerung. More likely the Twilight of the Mosquitoes.

Acknowledgment:

except for the photo of the guttering, none of these photos is mine: thanks go to the internet.

2 comments:

Oh, so fortunate to have a properly inhabited bat box! We've had one for years at Three Peaks attach to the 'Thistle Tree' (a great, ancient gum tree); and it's only ever been inhabited by spiders.Loved bats 'about the size of a walnut": perfect.

Situated on a hillside, Le Ripe in Chianti has an orchard with heritage fruit trees, an organic vegetable garden, a row of 18 olives, wild figs, wild grapes, dozens of lavender bushes, a medieval hortus conclusus,a shrubbery, English roses and drifts of bulbs, all requiring labour and love but giving much pleasure in return.

The farm buildings, once home, stable, sty and byre, now renovated, host our friends and family. The cottage, a former barn, and two apartments in the main building, once stable and stall, are rented to guests who come by the week or longer. For more information on staying at Le Ripe, see our rental website.

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a new website for readers from Holland, just launched by a friend: have a look at the original Tuscan works of art and craft

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If you have a Google account you are free to make comments on this blog (see Comments link after each post). If you do not have a Google account, please write to Le Ripe, letting us know who you are and why you would like to participate. You will need an alias (preferably in Latin). We will then send you a request to join as an official contributor and ecco: you're in!Upupa Epops